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Army's Cut of 'Future Soldier' May Impact Med-Tech
docinthemachine writes "The U.S. Army has decided to axe its $500 Million 'Land Warrior Soldier of the Future' program. If this goes through, the loss of future medical technology will be enormous. Many do not realize the enormous amount of medical technology that trickles down from the military. The program was working on develops new HUDs, 3D vision systems, and bioarmor. Surgeons today are using this technology (via DARPA) to develop new robotic surgery, bioimplants, intelligent prosthetics and more." That's the downside. The reason for the program's cutting is fairly obvious: "Unfortunately, land Warrior is part of the Army's Future Combat System (FCS) Initiative. This is the roadmap for an unprecedented hi-tech modernization of the Army. What new? How about an air force of completely unmanned remote controlled fighters- it's in the budget! Unfortunately, the entire project is so far over budget it becomes a target for cuts. Originally at $60 billion, then $127B, recent estimates have balooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B) and some are calling it the biggest military boondoggle ever."
9/11 wasn't a one shot deal. It was part of a planed ongoing set of attacks. The problem is the perception of the US has changed in their minds and one thing this war against terror has done is set down something of a set of expected behavior that wasn't previously there.
For years the US has tried to go after terrorist like bin ladden as a policing action were they would capture and prosecute him. Combine that with Iraq shooting down a US plane in the no fly zone back around 93 and we didn't do anything with the normal response of Iraq shoot missile at US planes and we shoot up their missile launchers you will see a pattern of tit for tat. When they went after the towers in NY, we have had 8 or 9 years of leading the impression that we would just blow something of theirs up and thats it. When Al Qaeda's number two guy was captured, he admited that they never guessed we would react in the ways we did.
Now as for Iraq, Our biggest mistake was talking about doing it then waiting an extra two months to satisfy one of the political parties objections of going in without the UN's approval. Durring this time, Turkey told us we couldn't invade from their country wich forced us to come in from the south only. A lot of the early insurgents would have been defeated durring that first invasion of the war but it didn't happen. Once they started organizing to the point they were effective, they noticed that they didn't have to win the battles they had with us if they just picked them to cause the most liability to the Americans.
This meant hiding behind women and children and using churches hospitals as bases and point to launch attacks. Follow that up with their insistence of removing their dead during the fight to mutilate the bodies making it appear as if they died from other causes and dumping them in the streets to frighten regular citizens of Iraq. What you end up with is a country of people not sure of who is going to win so they are hesitant to pick sides and a media frenzy in favor of letting the insurgents win and pulling our troops out before the job is done. Part of that frenzy is the assumption that we are failing so bad that we are actually encouraging recruitment for Al Qaeda.
If you ask me, We are losing in Iraq. Not because we aren't achieving our goals, It is because we are clearly stating our goals to the points were Iraqi citizens can understand them as well as the rest of the world (including the US). We are allowing the insurgents to dictate the general feel and every time we counter that, they have the ability to use it against us. It doesn't matter what we do now because the opposition will have the ability to use it against us. The most optimal situation would be success in setting up an effective Iraqi government that can provide security (at minimum) internally while we reduce our presence to outlying bases providing security from outside forces. This would allow us to train a military and eventually leave. But even doing that allows insurgent to gain momentum in claiming they beat us back (even though it was part of our stated plane).